CINCINNATI - Hamilton County Prosecutor Michael Allen and a lawyer on his staff broke the prosecutor office's ethics policy by having a sexual relationship, Ohio's attorney general said on Thursday.
Attorney General Jim Petro, who investigated at the request of Allen's office, said he was unable to determine whether Allen violated state or federal laws on sexual harassment. He said most of the conduct that assistant prosecutor Rebecca Collins complains of in a lawsuit against Allen occurred when the two were alone and cannot be verified or disputed by others.
"It will be up to the jury in her civil case to determine whether she or Mr. Allen is the more credible witness as to what took place between them," said Petro who, like Allen, is a Republican.
Allen, whose office prosecuted Hustler magazine publisher Larry Flynt and cases resulting from Cincinnati's 2001 riots, said on Aug. 25 that he had a consensual extramarital affair with a lawyer in his office and feared that he would be sued. Allen said the affair lasted from December 1999 through August 2003. . . .
[A]llen refused to answer questions by the investigators about whether he and Collins had sex at the prosecutor's offices or on county time, Petro said.
Details here from the AP via the Akron Beacon Journal.